I have a lot of fun creating my own texture selection for the EBE but I dont seem to understand the N and S texture.
Looking at the textures_D.dds, textures_N.dds and textures_S.dds the N and S seem to be just a large single texture not reflecting the surface of the 16 textures in textures_D.dds.

I am asking because I want to use the FPSC stock textures that have D (or D2), N and S and I don't know if the graphics would actually beefit if I painstakingly load/resize/regroup and additional 32 textures. Als I am a bit curious if the FPSC I.dds texture has any use in GG.

Btw, can I safely assume
- that all stock FPSC models and textures that haven't been included in GG (like about all the segments and most of the doors) can be used, edited and made available to the community for free?
- that all the remaining models and textures from the model packs that make up the free "Classic Pack" (again mostly the segments)can be used, edited and made available to the community for free?

An _N texture is a normal map texture, this texture is basically a map that tells the game engine where all the lumps and ridges are in your texture, it's used to give the texture a more 3D look. The _S texture is the specular map, this map tells you where on your texture is shiny and where isn't, the whiter a part is the shinier it is, the blacker a part is the less shiny it is.

So then the N and S texture for the standard textures_D.dds in the ebebank/default folder are actually not doing anything as they are both just flat featureless .dds

Do the N and S textures from the TCG stock media translate 1:1 into GG ? The shaders work a bit differntly in both engines afair.

EDIT: In addition I just checked the textures_profile.txp

which brought another question up ^^
- Is the EBE designed to be expanded to more than 4x4 textures 1024x1024 or would i try that at my own ristk?

I have this too and it seems to be a bug. I thought they used the normal map, but I am not sure.

I dug a little deeper into this and realized that when you replace textures with RMB in the editor AND you pick one with N and S textures, the EBE creates 3 new plates for D, N and S textures, so the default "empty" N and S are probably only a kind of "filler".

Unfortunately those N and S texture plates don't do anything. I renamed on of the D textures and added both the version with N and S textures as well as the new one to the plate. and there is NO difference to be seen, no shader effects of any kind for the texture that comes with N and S.

I wonder what would happen if you put your actual texture sheet into something like NORMALIZATOR and created your own D N S textures. Then just copied and overwrite them ?

What happens when you save the EBE entity - I've got a vague memory that it then compiles the normals selected on the texture plate into a D and an N texture atlas for the saved entity and when that is used in game the normals are applied. Perhaps this isn't working and/or I'm misunderstanding.

Cheers.

I admit, I haven't considered that. So far I have never saved the EBE as an entity as I only used it to experiment with creating underground/indoor levels, therefore I have only saved the whole map.

It works as it should.

Darkstone download this folder which contains darkstone_D and darkstone2_D, N, S.
Copy them to ebebank/texturesource and try, you should see the difference between only a diffuse texture and diff-norm-spec like in the attached image.

I looked further into it and realized, that the default textures_D.dds plate, has blank textures_N.dds and textures_S.dds plates.

But when you right-click the plate to exchange a texture and you pick one from the textureressource folder with N and S maps , then it adds those to the textures_N.dds and textures_S.dds plates. Even if you pick the same texture, only then do you get the N and S added.

I also learned that when adding a new texture to the plate that has no N or S map, than the old one gets replaced wiht a blank one.
But ONLY if the new texture ends with _D.dds. Otherwise the N and S textures remain on their respective plates. So its a good idea to keep a copy of the blank N and S plates in case you plan to add simple .png textures to the plate.